20

HANSEN DIDN’T RESPOND right away.

Erin shifted on the bed, stretching her legs out while he considered what she had said. She continued to be impressed by him. She fully expected he would defend the alien he had worked with for years, but he didn’t do so immediately. She could tell he was searching his mind, and his emotions, and taking her challenge to Drake’s possible motives seriously.

Finally, he fixed a steady gaze on her and said, “All I can tell you is that I’ve come to trust Drake implicitly. And I have confidence that when you meet him, all of your remaining doubt will be wiped away as well.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said. “I really do. And speaking of meeting him, are you ready to finish explaining the instructions in his text message?”

“Yes. I’d read the message back, but I don’t have my phone anymore. Do you remember it?”

“Not the exact wording, maybe, but at least the gist.”

Hansen nodded. “Okay. So Drake wrote something to the effect of get to the MB—molecular biologist—in Colorado. He added that he would contact us there, forty-eight hours from when he sent the text, and that the guy would be expecting us. So Drake must have managed to get a message to him also.”

“We should contact this molecular biologist right now.”

“Can’t. Drake told me he was working with a genetic engineer in Colorado and had me memorize his address. But he wouldn’t tell me his name or phone number.”

“Compartmentalization?” said Erin.

“Compartmentalization,” agreed Hansen.

Erin pursed her lips in thought. “Drake also said something about starting right away when we got there.”

“Right. This is the guy he’s been working with to have the viral construct ready. Everything is set to go.”

“Does that mean if I were to tell him the proper doses required for each of the eight genes, he’ll know how to engineer them all so they’ll be expressed at precisely these levels?”

“If that’s what set to go means, then yes. I’m not a molecular biologist.”

“So Drake wants us to work with his genetic engineer to finish the virus immediately. Without necessarily waiting for him.”

“Right.”

“Which means he assumed that you could convince me to divulge the combination. He’s confident you’ll get me to overlook his unfortunate Hugh Raborn impersonation and join your efforts.”

“I suppose so,” said Hansen. He stared at Erin and spread his hands out in front of him. “About that,” he continued. “About convincing you. How am I doing?”

“You’re doing great. You’re as persuasive as they come. At this point I think everything you’ve said and believe are probably correct. But the penalty for being wrong about this is too high not to be sure. So I’ll give up the cure. But first I want to at least verify that the virus he’s putting it into is actually a cold virus, and not something more … deadly.”

“And how would you go about doing that?”

“Your molecular biologist in Colorado will have state-of-the-art genetic engineering equipment,” she said. “Which has really come a long way. You can build long chains of DNA to your specifications very quickly, using a device built for just this purpose. It used to be a lot more complicated—you’d have to piece together snippets of sequence from various places, but now you can just synthesize it, base pair by base pair. And there are devices that can do the reverse, take a given stretch of DNA and tell you the composition—break it down to a long stream of A’s, G’s, C’s, and T’s.”

Erin finally noticed Hansen’s knowing nods and stopped. “I’m getting the sense you’re already familiar with this,” she said.

“Given my background, I shouldn’t be. But Drake sent me to a company called Seq-Magic in Houston to check out their new model; the Seq-Magic Ultra. So I actually got to see one of these devices in action. Drake wanted the best equipment available. The Ultra does both synthesis and sequencing.”

“In the same device?”

Hansen nodded.

“The equipment has come even further than I thought.”

“It really is amazing what this thing can do,” agreed Hansen. “It’s fast and insanely accurate.” He paused. “Drake did end up buying one. I only found out recently it had ended up in Colorado.” He gestured toward Erin. “But you were saying…”

“To verify this is on the level, all I’ll need to do is have your genetic engineer give me a sample of the viral construct he’s using. I’ll have your fancy device sequence it. Then I just have to have a computer compare the result to the known sequences of cold viruses, which are called rhinoviruses. There are differences between strains, but they’re slight—just enough to get past your immune system each time so you get a new cold every year. This will verify the virus is what Drake says it is.”

“Sounds easy enough,” said Hansen.

“Well, I oversimplified a bit. The rhinovirus is an RNA virus, not DNA, so the sequence will be the inverse, so to speak, of the DNA sequence. And Drake’s version will have been further engineered. Which means I’ll have to use an algorithm that can compare sequences and allow for interruptions. But the core of the sequence should be identical to known rhinoviruses. And the stretches that aren’t had better not match any known pathogens. If they do…” She paused. “Well, let’s just say that this would be a problem.”

Hansen spent several minutes trying to convince her that this would be an unnecessary waste of time, but he didn’t get anywhere, and finally gave up. “If you insist on testing, we’ll test. But I’m telling you, you have nothing to worry about.”

“Well, I guess we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves anyway. Because verifying the virus will be straightforward. The hard part will be surviving long enough to get to your address in Colorado.”

“I’m not worried about that either,” said Hansen. “Not given your skills,” he said appreciatively. He glanced at his watch. “But with respect to our next move, I think we should lie low for tonight.”

“I agree.”

There was a long silence.

Hansen looked uncertain. “So, um … I guess we’ll be forced to spend the night together in this room, then,” he said awkwardly.

“It’s the only safe thing to do,” agreed Erin.

Hansen blew out a breath. “I’ll sleep on the floor, of course.”

Erin smiled. “Of course,” she repeated firmly.

Erin Palmer had never been the type to sleep with a guy on a first date. Or even a sixth. But there was a first time for everything. And in her heart, she knew that before the night was through, no power on earth would keep her from confirming that Kyle Hansen’s physiology was 100 percent human.

PART TWO

We have here an unusual opportunity to appraise the human mind, or to examine, in Earth terms, the roles of good and evil in a man: his negative side, which you call hostility, lust, violence, and his positive side, which Earth people express as compassion, love, tenderness.

—

Star Trek,

“The Enemy Within” (Spock)

Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was that it was duplicate. A man is two men, he on the right exactly resembling him on the left. Having noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the left, a leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and still find on each side the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. At last he would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart on one side, would deduce that there was another heart on the other. And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong.

—Gilbert Keith Chesterton